CHILD TAKES FAMILY'S ANGER AWAY

As we approach another Choose Respect rally season in Alaska our thoughts turn to the thousands of Alaskan families who regularly experience anger and violence.  Gordon MacDonald* tells this story.

 

   A Nigerian woman who is a physician at a great teaching hospital in the United States came out of the crowd to say something kind about the lecture I had just given. She introduced herself using an American name. "What's your African name" I asked. She immediately gave it to me, several syllables long with a musical sound to it. "What does the name mean?" I wondered. 

   She answered, "It means 'Child who takes the anger away.'"

 When I inquired as to why she would have been given this name, she said, "My parents had been forbidden by their parents to marry. But they loved each other so much that they defied the family opinions and married anyway. For several years they were ostracized from both their families. Then my mother became pregnant with me. And when the grandparents held me in their arms for the first time, the walls of hostility came down. I became the one who swept the anger away. And that's the name my mother and father gave me."

This could be another name for Jesus.  Oh, how our world thirsts for an end to the anger that does violence to women, children, and men.  Many families in our communities and even in our churches need to learn new ways of being family together.   

O God, how we yearn for those holy moments, like when holding a baby for the first time, you soften our hearts and melt away the anger.  




Grace and peace,

Dave

   * Citation: Gordon MacDonald, author, speaker, Leadership      editor-at-large, Leadership Weekly (11-6-02)